Two years before she died in 2009 at age 83, the eccentric and brilliant amateur photographer Vivian Maier of Chicago forfeited ownership of the contents of the storage lockers in which she had kept truckloads of negatives, prints and other materials.

The contents were quickly auctioned for a pittance to several collectors and “resellers” who found they had made the discovery of a lifetime.

The contents of Maier’s collection included more than 100,000 negatives that charted her hitherto-private career as a superb street photographer who focused mainly on vignettes of New York and Chicago.

Thanks to “Out of the Shadows,” a small but highly compelling exhibition at the Cleveland Print Room, Clevelanders can get a close look at some of the images that have made Maier posthumously a photographic legend.

The show focuses on 39 photographs from the 1950s forward, in which Maier quietly focused her twin lens Rolleiflex on sidewalk junk shops, children at play, lovers in Central Park and other subjects, including herself.

Maier’s narrow, elfin face appears in several images in which she aimed her camera at her reflection in a mirror, turning away to show her profile instead of her direct gaze.

View full sizeThe Cleveland Print Room's gallery is a fine setting for the Vivian Maier exhibition.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Maier worked for decades as a nanny and a live-in caregiver for clients in New York and Chicago, an occupation that provided her with the time to pursue her art quietly.

As the images in the Cleveland show indicate, she had a spectacular eye for visual details that arrest the eye, and an ability to capture the intrusion of the surreal in everyday life. Her work is frequently tinged with pathos and a slight sadness, but also with a wise and appreciative sense of humor.

A 1967 photograph of a man in an overcoat warming himself by a bonfire next to a backyard jungle gym in Highland Park, Ill., outside Chicago, has a post-apocalyptic aura.

Another image portrays a framed lithograph of Jesus Christ propped against the back of a wicker chair at a sidewalk sale, with a dishwasher rack set on the seat. It’s an ironic mélange of the sacred and the mundane enthroned together, seemingly ready to be discarded.

Gallery Review

What: "Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows." A master of street photography discovered posthumously.

In 1968, in Wilmette, Ill., Maier captured an image of a girl peeking out through a hole in a shattered culvert at a beach. The girl looks wary, like an animal seeking shelter from a hostile world.

Around the same time, Maier also snapped a close-up view of a woman checking an infant’s diaper as the toddler scampers in wet sand at the water’s edge.

The woman’s thick, pasty legs and derriere form an inverted V that frames the child, whose bottom rhymes visually and humorously with that of the grownup in the picture.

All the super prints in the show were made posthumously in series of 15 by printers Ron Gordon and Sandy Steinbrecher at the behest of collector and lender Jeffrey Goldstein, one of the principal owners of Maier’s oeuvre today.

The irony of Maier’s life is that she died in obscurity. The collectors who bought her prints and negatives in 2007 weren’t able to trace her identity or location until after her death in 2009. Since then, her renown has skyrocketed.

By providing a taste of Maier’s accomplishment in its gallery, the Print Room has set a high benchmark for itself as a gallery. Established last year as a nonprofit community darkroom in the burgeoning arts district along Superior Avenue east of downtown, the Print Room may also become an important venue for the appreciation of fine photography. Maier, very likely, would be pleased.

Arts Features

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